The present invention relates to a hand-controlled faucet, and particularly to one which may be conveniently turned "on" or "off" by a simple manipulation of the hand and without requiring the user to grasp a knob for this purpose.
The conventional faucet includes a knob which is grasped by the user in order to turn-on and turn-off the faucet. Such a conventional faucet has a number of drawbacks. Thus, after the user has washed his hands, he must again grasp the knob to turn-off the water, and therefore any contamination on the knob may be transferred to the user's washed hands. In addition, the extra manipulation required in order to turn-off the faucet is wasteful of water.
Several types of faucet constructions have been proposed to avoid these drawbacks. One type includes a foot pedal which is operated by the user to turn-on and turn-off the water flow; however, this type requires substantial mechanism between the foot pedal and the faucet shut-off valve, which makes the faucet expensive to produce and to maintain. Another type of faucet includes an electrical or optical sensor which is controlled by the position of the user's hands in order to turn-on or turn-off the water flow; such a construction, however, involves electrical or optical elements which also make the faucet expensive to produce and to maintain.
An object of the present invention is to provide a new type of hand-controlled faucet avoiding the above drawbacks.